Sludge In Flask Gives Clues To Origin of Life 361
sciencehabit writes "In the 1950s, scientist Stanley Miller conducted a series of experiments in which he zapped gas-filled flasks with electricity. The most famous of these, published in 1952, showed that such a process could give rise to amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. But a later experiment, conducted in 1958, sat on the shelf--never analyzed by Miller. Now, scientists have gone back and analyzed the sludge at the bottom of this flask and found even more amino acids than before--and better evidence that lightning and volcanic gasses may have helped create life on Earth."
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:1, Insightful)
and say "NA! NA! NOT LISTENING!"
But don't let that stop you.
Yes, because as we all know, anyone who believes in a creator God is a backwards moron who hates science.
No person who believes in God could possibly embrace science as the best way we have yet to understand creation, separate fact from supposition, and advance our knowledge by appreciating the brains that God gave us. Just like no person who believes in God could possibly think that an almighty, all-knowing transcendental God for whom time is meaningless could have used evolution as the means of creating life on Earth, setting first causes into motion (i.e. big bang) content with the certainty that the result will unfold as desired. Thus, no person who believes in God can possibly be fascinated by what this scientist has discovered, right?
No person who believes in God can be anything other than a raving lunatic fanatic because ... because ... because if they were other than that, it would be harder for you to feel superior to them. Now there's a theory that fits the facts.
But as you said, don't let that stop you.
Re:If true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because as we all know, anyone who believes in a creator God is a backwards moron who hates science.
If they take their religion literally, I give them much respect. They are still wrong but at least they are true to their beliefs.
Today's 'religious' people very conveniently ignore the parts of religion they find distasteful or outright horrifying. Those people I do not give any respect towards their beliefs. If you want the 'good' parts you have to take the bad parts.
Religion is entirely a human creation - to explain the (at the time) unexplainable and to provide the ability to live 'nicely' with your neighbor. Every single religion on the planet has the same basic tenets; be nice, be honest, be good. That could be a sign of a 'creator' or it could just as easily be evidence of the same human desires manifesting themselves in very similar ways in disparate circumstances. In which case their 'creator' was 'necessity' the mother of invention.
Science is continually expanding our knowledge. What about religion? It is only clinging to the as yet unprovable factoids. It is introducing no new evidence to the record. Hell science is introducing proof of pieces of the biblical fables. Not of their true meaning but that they at least happened. I find that both infinitely fascinating and ironic.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Lightning zaps a volcano
2. Wait X [m/b]illion years
3. ...
4. Profit
And yet the creationists are the ones with fairy tales? [does not compute]
Until and unless scientists can create actual life forms in a sterile clean-room from periodic table elements, life on this planet and exactly how it got here remains quite a bit more myserious than some would have you believe despite our best efforts to understand it.
Personally the part that confounds me is that DNA is highly organized information. Assuming a starting point of a planet with no life forms and no pre-existing DNA to bootstrap the process, its formation seems like negentropy in an otherwise entropic Universe. Evolution doesn't seem to have a real answer to this question other than throwing large amounts of time at the problem. Creationism merely relocates the problem; one could ask if God created all of this then what are God's origins, or if there was never a time when God did not exist how does one even begin to comprehend that or really understand what that means? Panspermia of course has the same flaw; if Earth got its life from a visiting comet/asteriod then where did that get living organisms?
Any way you look at it, the very fact that we're here to have this discussion is incredibly mysterious. I don't share the urge some have to dismiss or gloss over that fact. I actually find it a beautiful thing to celebrate, not a nuisance to be explained away.
Re:Earth is BIG (Score:2, Insightful)
They're actually very similar, in the grand scheme of things. They're DNA and RNA based, use the same amino acids (or at least, almost exactly the same) etc. There was a common ancestor between archaea and all known life, so far as I know.
It's quite possible that life evolved twice, or more than twice. The trick would be recognizing it when we see it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_biosphere
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:1, Insightful)
Creationist means that they believe in a creator. Youll note parent spoke of a creator in his description; his point was that there can be several causes for things-- a direct, physically observable cause, and a super-natural cause.
I also like the way "Scientist has found evidence that may give clues" has turned into a rant about how it proves that religious types are wrong. Who's making unscientific assertions, again?
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:4, Insightful)
to explain the (at the time) unexplainable and to provide the ability to live 'nicely' with your neighbor
What part of the new testament tries to explain the origin of rain again, or states that the point is to live well with your neighbor? I seem to remember Jesus specifically going after those who placed too much emphasis on personal righteousness and rebuking them-- to the point where they desired his death.
The problem with today's armchair religious historians is that they make assertions such as these which fly in the face reality.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:3, Insightful)
The real problem with any religious activity is that it's a drain on human energy. There's no value in attempting to prove which particular set of fairy tales is true.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:5, Insightful)
Ahhhh my teen years. No there can be intelligent people who believe in God. But they just haven't spent enough time thinking about all of that to realize that such a God is a complete and utter asshole who you better errr... pray, doesn't actually exist.
Think about it. He's all powerful. He's all caring. He creates a universe with deterministic laws which will undoubtedly create a very specific result... and we're the best he could do?
Any engineer who isn't a raving lunatic could sketch the basic design for a new species you want evolved which isn't subject to so much pain and suffering in about 3 minutes.
If we're the product of a divine plan set to unfold over billions of years than God is a callous asshole without any ethics.
Furthermore if you assume that God used science (and a deterministic universe) to create us that we have no free will. Without free will we all are behaving exactly as programmed and once again God is responsible for all of our actions. Which means when Hitler exterminated the Jews... God. When the Tsunami washed across Japan... God. Etc...
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:3, Insightful)
"I love it when people think they know more than God."
That's easy to do. I also know more than Zeus, Odin and Ra.
Re:If true... (Score:4, Insightful)
That could really put a spin on things. Evolution ~ Creationism. Humm...
No amount of evidence would convince creationists that they're wrong.
As the saying goes, you can't use reason to leverage someone out of an opinion that wasn't acquired by reason.
Re:Earth is BIG (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer: i was a student under one of Miller's former post-docs. That doesn't mean I know much more than you.
From my understanding, the problems to be solved had to do with the misconception that organic molecules could only be made "organically." It was well known that life makes amino acids, fats, etc.; however, it was also well known that such things were done by the action of enzymes or other structures within living cells. So the question was more of a "how do we break the chicken-and-egg paradox?" instead of "can we reverse engineer exactly how life was created".
The fact that you could start off with inorganic materials and make organic building blocks without a living system processing them was the ground shaking breakthrough. Once you had that, then it's easy to conjecture that enough organic molecules would eventually build up that some of them would become self-organizing (and eventually resemble life). If some other technique was discovered to make organic molecules from inorganic, then the key missing link would still have been satisfied.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:0, Insightful)
The OP did that while painting with a broad enough brush that no such distinction was made.
Yes, it was childish. Every movement, set of beliefs, etc has lunatics who make the rest of them look bad. Its just that, let's face it, we have decided in society that religious people in general and Christians in particular are OK to make fun of no matter how much we stereotype them in the process. Anyone who said that illegal aliens who join gangs and murder people are representative of all Mexicans would be called an ethnocentrist, and anyone who said that a crack dealer who happens to be black is a "typical black person" would be called a racist. Both would be regarded as bigots.
But make fun of all religious people in a gleeful, self-serving childish attempt to feel superior to them, portraying the typical creationist as an idiot who won't listen to scientific evidence, and that particular form of bigotry seems acceptable. For some reason.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:5, Insightful)
Until and unless scientists can create actual life forms in a sterile clean-room from periodic table elements, life on this planet and exactly how it got here remains quite a bit more myserious than some would have you believe despite our best efforts to understand it.
A scientist believes the theory with the most scientific support, while still experimenting. It is not scientific or rational to look at a theory, see it is not 100% explained, and thus decide to believe an alternate hypothesis with no scientific support.
Assuming a starting point of a planet with no life forms and no pre-existing DNA to bootstrap the process, its formation seems like negentropy in an otherwise entropic Universe.
I take it you failed thermodynamics? The second law applies to closed systems and overall entropy, not localized entropy within a system. We can't even definitively define the universe as a closed system and you think you can assess the overall entropy in the system?
Any way you look at it, the very fact that we're here to have this discussion is incredibly mysterious.
Everything is very mysterious until you investigate. The scientific method is the best tool we have for such investigation. As a scientist I disagree with your characterization. By the same token you could claim gravity is very mysterious and thereby imply it is not really be happening. The only qualitative difference is that people understand the theory of gravity better than the theory of abiogenesis.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:1, Insightful)
The only qualitative difference is that people understand the theory of gravity better than the theory of abiogenesis.
No, the difference is that we can *test* and *prove* gravity to be happening, even though we may not understand how it works 100%. We cannot test, and therefore cannot prove, abiogenesis. It remains an untested theory, and therefore the origins of life - on this planet or anywhere else - remain rather more mysterious than gravity.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:4, Insightful)
Words have meanings, but when Young Earth Creationists go 'round calling themselves creationists as loudly as possible, don't be surprised when the definition changes over time from a broad one to a narrow one.
"Gay" used to mean happy. Now in nearly every context, it means homosexual.
When you ignore vernacular use of words in an argument, people tend to laugh and deride you for "arguing semantics" because you're not arguing the point anymore, you're just being an asshole.
Ignore vernacular at your peril.
--
BMO
Then whence cometh evil? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent.
Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God!
-- Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)
Re:Oh my... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I even bother reading these threads in hope of some interesting discussion? The only threads more retarded than evolution/origin of life ones are the ones related to global warming.
Re:Science. (Score:4, Insightful)
Your analogy is broken...
This is more like finding worms eating a corpse, and then saying it's proof that the worms must have been there when the person was living.
I can assure you that those samples were intact all these years. Besides, most of the samples were in vials and not in flasks. How do I know this personally? I did my PhD work in a lab right next to Jeffrey Bada's (see the paper, he's one of the main authors). I was there when he found these samples from their storage or something and told us all about it.
Also any amino acids that were in the vials must have been synthesized in the Miller's apparatus since there was no starting materials left in those vials (remember the S.M. were gases). Even so this experiment is still irrelevant to the origin of life for the reasons I've discussed in another comment of mine (see below).
Regardless, this experiment is still irrelevant because those gases Miller used (H2S, H2, NH3, CO2, esp.) cannot coexist in the same place for any appreciable amount of time. Gases like CO2 would not exist without a significant amt of O2, but H2S, H2, NH3, etc (and the amino acid products) would be quickly oxidized at elevated temp in the presence of O2. Moreover, if O2 was absent, unfiltered UV radiation (w/out O2, no O3 layer) would also quickly destroy those reducing gases and amino acid products.
Re:Who will all just plug their ears (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I do have evidence that God exists but whether or not you will accept that evidence depends on your experience with that evidence. For more about what I really mean, read this post: http://www.theeternaluniverse.com/2011/02/everyday-philosophy-epistemological.html [theeternaluniverse.com]
I cannot prove to you that God exists or that religion is not just a creation of humans (many of them certainly are though) but that does not mean that there is not evidence the He exists.